Profile

Nino Luraghi is a historian of ancient Greece. Trained in Italy and Germany, he has held academic appointments at Harvard University and the University of Toronto. He teaches at Princeton since 2008. His interests include tyranny and monarchy in Greece from the archaic age to the Roman conquest, ancient and modern slavery, ethnic identity and tradition, and Greek and Roman historiography. His 1994 book Tirannidi arcaiche in Sicilia e Magna Grecia makes a case for integrating the political history of the Greek colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy into the mainstream of Greek history. In various articles, including his contributions to the volume The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus he edited (Oxford 2001, paperback edition 2005), he has explored the relationship of early Greek historiography to the genres of oral tradition, with a focus on folktale. His 2008 book The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory takes a long-term perspective to the development of notions of ethnic identity in a region of the ancient Peloponnese, making extensive use of insights and methods from anthropology and sociology. In another group of articles, one of which appeared in the volume Helots and their Masters, which he co-edited with S. Alcock, he has advanced a reinterpretation of the regime of dependence of the slaves of the Spartans, known as Helots.

Teaching Interests

Luraghi teaches courses on ancient historians, especially Herodotus and Thucydides, in the original, and introductory and advanced courses in Greek history, on topics including tyranny, the history and archaeology of the Greek cities in Sicily, Sparta, Greek epigraphy etc. He welcomes applications from prospective graduate students interested in working on any aspect of Greek history and historiography.